Building a willow hide during the Ennerdale Fell Care Day

Schoolchildren joined volunteers in a second clean-up day in a remote Lakeland valley that saw the equivalent of 34 days’ work completed in just one day.

The Ennerdale Fell Care Day helpers dodged hail showers to help clear old fencing and plant about 1,000 trees.

Eighty schoolchildren from west Cumbria helped a similar number of adult volunteers remove hundreds of metres of old fence and extend a breeding area for marsh fritillary butterflies in the valley in the West of the Lake District.

The event was the second Fell Care Day organised by the Friends’ Flora of the Fells team and followed a successful gathering on Helvellyn last month.

Volunteers from Friends of the Lake District, the Wild Ennerdale Partnership, the National Trust and Lake District National Park Authority braved muddy drains to repair a well used footpath and collect four sacks of litter from the lakeshore while children from Moor Row and Ennerdale and Kinniside schools helped build a willow wildlife hide.

Oak and birch saplings were transported to a site on the lakeshore by an Environment Agency boat. Volunteers walked for an hour to the site to help with the planting.

Gareth Browning of the Wild Ennerdale group said: “It’s fantastic to give people the opportunity to get out in this wonderful landscape and plant native oak trees which will hopefully be around for hundreds of years to come.”

A group of five volunteers carried out a survey of red grouse on the surrounding Herdus Fell. Simon Webb from Natural England said: “Without the volunteer effort we would not have been able to survey the fell systematically. Together we have confirmed that these beautiful upland birds still frequent Ennerdale.”

Grouse have not been recorded for many years on the fell.

The charity is planning two more Fell Care Days next year. For more information, or to volunteer contact Sue Manson, Flora events and communications officer on 01539 733187 or email her.